On a busy night during the Olympics, i headed over to Canada North hospitality house with a group of True North Media House documenters. Tagging along was a CBC crew including the charming reporter Heba Hani (sp ?). I was included in the finished CBC Radio 1 piece which focused on media-makers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

This created an interesting scene as i was interviewing “Singing Goose” while a circle of TNMH folks documented the interview, then CBC audio crew and With Glowing Hearts film crew documented the documenters and the hosts of the hospitality house looked on with wonder and happiness.

From the first video dispatch outside the Worldwide Press Briefing (and ORN Press Conference), TNMH aimed to introduce “social media/journalism/reporting” as a viable and vital enhancement to the accredited Olympic coverage. By inspiring and educating content creators, we felt unique stories – including often controversial civic and community concerns as well as lesser-known athletes – could find a larger audience.

Indeed, from the remarkable worldwide reaction to the first Open Letter to VANOC, the conversation took off across both “social” and “traditional” media outlets who looked to our experience and research to understand the ‘lay of the land’ for citizen coverage in this age of ubiquitous web publishing tools (much of which was recapped in the Open Letter #2). Since starting the conversation, several co-working spaces have opened their doors to visiting reporters and local-centric media outlets are soliciting documenters with a story to tell to contribute heralding a tremendous opportunity for grassroots journalism.

Along this campaign, we’ve demonstrated and educated other about the tips and tactics learned by covering the past 3 Olympics on the ground. Along with the web publishing skills, we prepared a dossier of educational resources including original sources of laws and distilled this research to produce a Media Cans and Can’ts by interviewing diverse people with different points of view to define the grey area between IOC’s guidelines and a citizen’s right to self-expression.

The joy of covering world events comes from creating interesting content and publishing it to an enthused audience. My collaborators and I shared this passion and knowledge publicly with other community media organizations including presentations at Fresh Media at W2, Capilano College, Northern Voice, Vancouver Blogathon plus participation in Journalism that Matters, and dozens of other events about the nuts and bolts of publishing content within the new media paradigm. Additionally, my colleagues and I have mentored others about media literacy and creation including W2 Bladerunners program and Purple Thistle’s Youngunz program.

By pro-actively welcoming and collaborating with social media making visitors to Vancouver, TNMH will spark locals to share their area knowledge beyond the standard tourist circuit to enhance visitor’s experience and share the true spirit of who we are as a community.

Further, by documenting all the operational and academic knowledge we gather, this campaign can pass info along to for evolving coverage in London and Sochi – along with social reporters and documenters at other world events. The same way, concerned citizens in Vancouver (and everywhere else) looked to citizen reporters for unique and forthright coverage of cataclysmic world events like the Iran election and Copenhagen climate summit, this is an opportunity to tell the world about the impact of this global event in the communities we know best.

Demonstrate openness

No matter what your personal opinions about the Games are, it is important to understand your rights to share your stories with an audience. This impartial view is very important as the Olympics coming to Vancouver raised a litany of controversies and divided the citizenry in many ways. However, whether you wish to protest or celebrate, the TNMH campaigns feels your story is important to share if you so choose.

While not always easy, the campaign has kept most all communication public, meetings accessible, and outreached to other organizing, security and media entities to plainly state intentions. In fact, the producers of “With Glowing Hearts” – a documentary film project exploring the intersection of social justice, social media and social change in Vancouver – attended many TNMH meetings, events and lectures to create a segment about the campaign which tells more of the backstory of our efforts – foibles and all.

Find the stories

World news stories are regularly broken and enhanced by regular people using new web tools but important to have context with the content. What will be the compelling stories which will live on for decades after the Games? What ground-breaking story will break on Twitter first? How will the protests and celebrations go-exist? Will Vancouver really turn into a “big brother” zone? How will visitors view Vancouver in light of the social issues affecting the DTES?

No matter what the stories are, this will be the first Olympics in which people may collectively have a voice as loud as huge media conglomerates to place these experiences in the proper cultural place.

Further, communities like Squamish are almost ignored as they are not “Official” Olympic cities and/or some visitors may hesitate to trek out to suburban events like the Olympic live sites in Surrey. TNMH will provide a context to organize field trips to meet one another and share skills and find compelling stories beyond the athletic events.

A Moveable Feast

With prevalent wi-fi and data networks, “space” is less important than in years past. Like the stories themselves, social media making is a distributed experience. Rather than one physical location, the TNMH campaign will continue from a variety of locations throughout the Games.

Throughout the Olympic fortnight, TNMH will be a “moveable feast” with photowalks, museums trips, impromptu interviews, and meet-ups at international hospitality houses. Encouraging a smorgasbord of activities will leave room for exploring the issues of concern, developing international friendship, and fostering spontaneous journalistic and artistic collaboration.

If you have a museum, hospitality house, commercial enterprise, symposium, or event and would like share your message with an audience, consider hosting a TNMH meetup event and inviting a group of blogger, photographers, podcasters, videographers, etc. to spread your news. Fill out the contact form or ping @tnmh on Twitter with details and we’ll add to theTNMH Event Calendar.

It’s all of us

The True North Media House is wherever you are and what you make it. It’s all of us making the people’s history. For me personally, the idea of sharing grassroots coverage of the Olympics began in Nagano pre-Olympics, blossomed in SLC 2002 and grew working on innovative coverage with my collaborators during Torino 06 and Beijing 08 ~ Now, with all the jamboree in our backyard, I can’t wait to see what we produce together in Vancouver/Whistler 2010.

2010 Social Reporter Toolbox

To prepare for documenting your Olympic experience, here’s a reading list and handy resources (Note: This toolbox will become a growing resource page – for additions, please submit info via contact form or ping @tnmh on Twitter):

Beyond these resources are dozens of coffee shops, bars and studios from which to work – see wi-fi map.

Publishing outlets

Several Vancouver-centric media outlets are welcoming writers, photographers to publish content to their communities – inclusion in this list is not necessarily an endorsement, research to find a publishing home which best fits for your interests and work.

Along with other organizational compatriots who contributed in meaningful ways along the journey, Sixty4Media.com and Catalyst Internet contributed key design and development efforts, consider these fine companies for your web development needs.

KK and Uncle Weed check in from Canada Place after being rejected entry to the VANOC worldwide press briefing event — We had hoped use our experience crowd-covering previous Olympic Games to discuss how social media can enhance the accredited media’s coverage and also provide deep documentary into the fan experience and lesser-known athlete’s stories. Alas, we were asked to leave and watched over by a handful of Vancouver Police Officers.

So, outside we drink coffee and chat about the experience and such.

Note: As you may know, a LOT happened with social media and the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, specifically the emergence of True North Media House, a self-accrediting media making and sharing project which was documented in thousands of posts, throughout “mainstream/traditional” media, a documentary film and a Ph.D thesis.